Monday, December 24, 2012

December 24, 2012

Dear Friends and Family :)

Cultural Note:
Here in Chile, basically all of the holidays are celebrated with a dinner with the family. I don´t know if it's just because our family is terrible with traditions, but in my mind Thanksgiving is the only holiday where the main celebration is the food.

This Christmas is going to be really really weird :P First of all, the celebration is on the 24th instead of the 25th. It's hot, I´m not at home, and it's hot :P Today I played Soccer with a less active and his friends. His friends didn´t want anything to do with the church, but it was fun :P Later on today I´m going to sing Christmas carols with the ward to the less actives and our investigators. Not sure how that's going to go when it's hot outside :P Then at the end of the day we are going to have the Christmas dinner with one of the familes of the ward :)

The call will be tomorrow at 8 Chile time or a little beforehand or a little after :P We had planned to go to one members house to call, but they canceled on us yesterday so we are going to another family in the ward of our zone leaders. Hopefully the directions they gave us are good :P Also, I don´t have a Skype account and I don´t know if they will let me use theirs, so I think the simplest thing to do is for you guys to create an account for me. You possibly will need to create a markdeanarrow.com e-mail so you guys can set it up and then email me the username and password and I´ll log on :) I´m very excited to see you all and talk to you :)

This week we had our conference with the mission president. I have a lot to learn, but luckily a lot of time too :P For Christmas he gave us all a new form to fill out for our recent converts to make sure they are on the path to the temple hahaha (A good gift for missionaries :P ) And then he gave us all a journal so we can write down for our posterity the experiences that we have on our missions. During the conference, we watched the Christmas devotional (skipping the songs to not waist time haha :P) President Kähnlein talked a lot about goals and the real meaning of Christmas. How Jesus Christ gave his whole life as a gift from the moment he was born until he died for us (and before and after). What can we give for him? When I think of Christmas, I think of two Christmases in particular: The first was when we decided to give gifts to another family in need, and the second is when we were in need and someone decided to do the same for us. It reminded me of the talk by President Ukdorf during the Christmas devotional. We need to give and receive gifts graciously. If you haven´t seen the Christmas devotional, I would recommend it :)

What will you give to Christ this year?

All is well, ¡MERRY CHRISTMAS!
Elder Hall

PS. Pictures: This is another zone signing Christmas carols in the town center from the front & the back :P